You show up one day at the Monastery, cradling your precious
caffeine delivery device, only to find... change!
What's this? Was I demoted? What the $#%@ is a Sexton, anyway?

Well, the long-dreaded prophecy has come to pass. We have a
new level system.

The good news is, most of us will find we've gone up in
level. The progression at the low end of the scale is now smoother,
and the levels come a bit quicker, so hopefully they'll do a good
job of keeping our new members interested.

The bad news is, many of us will find our titles not quite so
grand as before. There are some material losses, as well. For each
level you gain, you now get only 2 additional votes. Hence, if you'd
just made Saint and now find yourself one of my fellow Priests, you're
down from 40 votes to 26. It'll take another 9000xp, to get back to
40... but it's all uphill from there, to a maximum of 58.

Many will lose level powers, as well. These changes are not yet
fully implemented, as they require that the permission system be
made a bit more granular, but hopefully things will be settled
shortly. The effects will be most noticeable to those who had
recently gained access to the consideration process. Any such
system requires a balance, and changing numbers have, over time,
made consideration rather different than in the past. We are
attempting to restore moderation to moderation.

Many who recall the original proposal will notice
differences. One of the complaints about the the proposed scheme
was that it left out many of our most experienced monks. The new
levels add a series of challenges even for the most active amongst us.
They're also pretty daunting for folks like me... but 3000xp looked
darned near unattainable to me when I got here, too, so I think there's
hope.

The role demerphq has played in bringing about this little miracle
cannot be overstated. From a technological standpoint, this is
entirely his baby. Building on his past work, finding and abstracting
away the original hard-coded XP checks strewn willy-nilly about the
site, he implemented this by creating the new preferences, updating
scads of minor nodes, and surviving a protracted kibitzing by several
rather opinionated people.

I, on the other hand, take full responsibility for the decision itself.
If you don't like it, I'm to blame. In my defense, I shall only say that
while I cannot hope to please everyone, I do entertain the hope that
this will please many, and that the rest will not be too deeply offended.

Now that it's done, I find, somewhat to my surprise, that I'm excited.
Last week I had no idea how many XP I had... now I find I'm only 566
points short of Vicar. I think a lot of people will feel the same.
It's all still a game, but if you play it right, it's a game of
learning, and helping others. That makes it a game worth playing. None
of the changes make it more likely that everyone will play fair...
but experience shows that the great majority in this community are in
it for the right reasons, and that's not likely to change either.

Below I have recorded the old and the new tables, for posterity...
not that posterity ever did anything for me. You'll have to ask
demerphq about anything which resembles math... I'm okay till about
10, then my shoes come off. The account of level powers isn't complete,
and there will be further changes to the powers anyway. The
site docs will be updated accordingly.

Old

Level

Powers

Title

Min XP

Votes

Current Users

Total Votes

% Diff

Delta

Delta 2

1

B

Initiate

-100000

0

27782

0

n/a

n/a

n/a

2

B

Novice

20

5

1832

9160

n/a

20

n/a

3

B

Acolyte

50

8

1070

8560

250

30

10

4

B

Scribe

100

12

712

8544

200

50

20

5

QI

Monk

200

16

899

14384

200

100

50

6

C

Friar

500

20

599

11980

250

300

200

7

Abbot

1000

25

333

8325

200

500

200

8

Bishop

1600

30

212

6360

160

600

100

9

Pontiff

2300

35

100

3500

144

700

100

10

Saint

3000

40

415

16600

130

700

0

New

Level

Powers

Title

Min XP

Votes

Current Users

Total Votes

% Diff

Delta

Delta 2

1

B

Initiate

-100000

0

27782

0

n/a

n/a

n/a

2

B

Novice

20

2

1832

3664

n/a

20

n/a

3

B

Acolyte

50

4

950

3800

250

30

10

4

B

Sexton

90

6

563

3378

180

40

10

5

BQI

Beadle

150

8

507

4056

167

60

20

6

Scribe

250

10

506

5060

167

100

40

7

Monk

400

12

329

3948

160

150

50

8

Pilgrim

600

14

375

5250

150

200

50

9

C

Friar

900

16

271

4336

150

300

100

10

Hermit

1300

18

186

3348

144

400

100

11

Chaplain

1800

20

154

3080

138

500

100

12

Deacon

2400

22

84

1848

133

600

100

13

Curate

3000

24

160

3840

125

600

0

14

Priest

4000

26

94

2444

133

1000

400

15

Vicar

5400

28

48

1344

135

1400

400

16

Parson

7000

30

33

990

130

1600

200

17

Prior

9000

32

30

960

129

2000

400

18

Monsignor

12000

34

18

612

133

3000

1000

19

Abbot

16000

36

11

396

133

4000

1000

20

Canon

22000

38

8

304

138

6000

2000

21

Chancellor

30000

40

5

200

136

8000

2000

22

Bishop

40000

42

6

252

133

10000

2000

23

Archbishop

50000

44

1

44

125

10000

0

24

Cardinal

60000

46

0

0

120

10000

0

25

Sage

70000

48

0

0

117

10000

0

26

Saint

80000

50

0

0

114

10000

0

27

Apostle

90000

52

0

0

113

10000

0

28

Pope

100000

54

1

54

111

10000

0

Powers

B

Receives bonus for using all available votes. Applies to levels shown only.

I

Can have a home node image. Applies to level shown and above.

Q

Can ask Q&A questions. Applies to level shown and above.

C

Can Consider nodes. Applies to level shown and above.

Update: Thanks a lot, Gramps... I had to go and update both tables!
;-)

Dang! I went from Bishop to Hermit overnight...sic transit gloria mundi.

This is a great idea, though. It keeps that little incentive going, to continue to grow. I know I have a tendency to slack off unless there's some carrot on a stick for me - doesn't have to be much, just something to give me that little extra push to keep on keeping on.

Not even coming close to knowing what was involved in terms of work, time and discussion, I can just thank the fellow monks for this effort.

I would like to ask: Why "Pope" > "Saint"? "Saint" should be the highest level since we seem to be using the catholic hierarchy. I could say the same for "Apostle" and "Pope". There were only 12 "Apostles", but many more "Popes"...

To be honest, this is not an "obvious" fact. It is a result of Chinese expansion, though I cannot imagine what they wanted with Tibet to begin with.

Having said that, I must agree with you that life in Tibet was a miserable existence often ending in starvation, freezing, or disease. I don't know how they're faring these days, but it is unlikely their lives are any worse. In fact, I would suspect that most of the folks there don't really much care who's in charge, as long as they get fed.

But but I don't like change, and Mr. Lumberg took my red swingline stapler, and I told them I cannot collate with the new Boston staplers, and I'm no longer a saint, but a Prior, and I didn't like Mike Prior when he played for the Colts, so this is the last straw and I have to set fire to the building.

(Oh, come on, this is a programmer's site! If we didn't have an Office Space reference, we'd all have to turn in our geek cards.)

Thanks for doing this. I think it has been needed for a long time.
A glance at the table shows that folks tended to slack off once they got to level 10;
you can see the membership piling up just on the far side of 3,000 points.

But I hate some of the names you've chosen for the levels.
"Grand Inquisitor" is the worst. Do you know what the Inquisition was?
Do you know what the Grand Inquisitor's job was? The first Grand Inquisitor,
Tomas de Torquemada, accused thousands of people of heresy.
Then he ordered them tortured until they "confessed", after which
they were burnt to death. Hundreds of thousands of Jews were
ordered to leave Spain within three months, and tens of thousands died in the process.

I don't suppose that was what you intended the title to convey,
but that's who the Grand Inquisitor was and that's what he did.
Graff says, above:

I might be inclined to slow down or suspend my contributions to the Monastery if
I were getting close to assuming that title (not like that's going to happen any time soon, but still), because for me the connotations of the term are
heinous, and I'd be embarrassed to see it next to my name.

I feel exactly the same way. I would be really upset and angry if I were
labeled "Grand Inquisitor Dominus". And I would certainly not want to post
or contribute here
if it looked as though that were getting close. "Grand Inquisitor" is not
a title of honor; it's a grave insult.

More generally, I am uncomfortable with the Christian references in many of the new names.
The old names were more generic. Buddhists have monks and abbots.
A pontiff is just a priest; a pastor is just a shepherd.
Lots of cultures have the idea of a Saint. Many religions, even most,
have some sort of priest. Absolutely anyone can be a scribe.

But deacons and canons are all Christians. So are bishops and
archibishops. Monsignors aren't just Christian; they are Roman Catholics.
So are cardinals. I'm not a Roman Catholic and I don't want to be one and I don't
want to be a Monsignor or a cardinal, either. To me, it seems
extremely weird. When did this become a Roman Catholic organization?
I don't consider it a promotion to be a Monsignor.
I am having trouble finding a way to express how bizarre and discomforting I find this.

Can't we come up with a different set of titles that does not so clearly
imply Christianity? How about "Master" and "Grand Master"?
"Sage"? "Vizier"? "Champion"? "Messenger"? "Expert"? "Oracle"? "Philosopher"? "Wizard"? "Virtuoso"?

Sigh. I had a feeling this might become an issue. I really was against the title of GI being in the list. Not only because of the history, but also because I dont think the name "fits" with the rest of the list and also because its just so easy to take the piss out of. So for about an hour we had 'Primate' in there. But of course I didnt realize how easy primate was to also take the piss out of. So on the grounds that inquisitor jokes were less of an issue than ape jokes we changed it back.

Obviously we got so distracted about how this could be used for jokes that we underestimated how much people might find this particular rank an insult. So we will definately fix it.

Regarding the Catholic theme, personally I don't mind it too much as it has the virtue that it has enough crazy ranks that we could fill out the table more or less. OTOH, reworking the titles over the next while to remove some of the issues people feel really strongly about is entirely possible.

Its quite possible that by the time you return next the rank GI will have been resigned to the dust heap (yet again). (Update: Yep, its been changed to 'Sage').

Allow me to add that one of the difficulties with doing stuff like this on PM is the tendency that everything gets talked to death without anything ever happening because we havent found the perfect system. In this case we went ahead with the new scheme anyway, so that we actually get somewhere while resolving the rough edges. While this means a bit of turbulence in the life our memberships overall this means we actually get to see new features in play instead of debating them to death without getting any benefit from them.

Regarding "Grand Inquisitor" level. The passage of time and Monty Python have greatly weakened our perception of the Spanish Inquisition as an atrocity against non-Roman Catholics, and Muslims and Jews in particular. demerphq hinted yesterday that this name was used in preference to "Primate" simply because the people directly concerned weren't keen on the idea of endless monkey jokes, but in retrospect the latter seems preferable. Do you have a suggestion for an acceptable replacement?

Regarding the RC bias in level titles, yes, now that there are nearly 3x as many levels it is all getting a bit much. It is possible that somebody may be moved to patch things so that users may select a title theme, much as they do now with the color scheme & layout.

Respectfully, virtualsue, the passage of time has not weakened this perception for everyone. While this particular atrocity took place centuries ago, it is only one among many committed against people (not just Muslims and Jews, but just about everyone in the world has been the target of genocide at one time or another). It's going on today. The title of Grand Inquisitor is neither necessary not particularly amusing, IMNSHO. How about minister, rabbi, lama, sat-guru (or just plain guru), swami, sifu, etc.? And how about those guys who help decide whether someone's a saint (one's the devil's advocate; I don't recall what the other one is called).? Angel, archangel, seraph, cherub, whatever? Surely we can do better.

somebody may be moved to patch things so that users may select a title theme

That's a completely ridiculous idea, IMNSHO. What the site looks like is one thing, but I rather think that we should be able to communicate about levels without people asking things like, "Huh? Oh, uh, what's a saint in the Pokemon theme again?" This is still Perl Monks, right?

I see your point, but I guess I'm pretty numb to the connotations myself. Maybe too many years of 1st edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, where level titles had no discernable logic and you just ignored them - except to say "Oh, my character Vainamoinen just made it to Necromancer! No, he doesn't do any necromancy, he's more into earthquakes and stuff."

Let me start by saying, 'Grand Inquisitor' is, far and away,
my favorite name of the bunch. For one thing, it's the title of a
famous chapter from The Brothers Karamazov, one of my
favorite books. It also, to my ear, has the cool sound of something
wicked. I envisioned Grand Inquistors poking people with Soft Cushions
in the Chatterbox, crying, "No one expects the PerlMonks
Inquisition!"

Your biggest problem is that the title of Grand Inquisitor rocks so
hard that once I've attained it, I'll want to stay there, instead of
getting a "promotion" to Saint.

I thought, therefore, that I was on safe enough ground, and that this
particular piece of political incorrectness would be allowed to slide.

This time around, however, things seem to be different. Any debate
over whether the title is justifiable is unnecessary; that several
people are honestly and seriously disturbed by a single title convinces
me that it is more harm than good.

At first, I had thought to replace it with Prophet; Sage grew on
me, however, and demerphq favored it, so there it is.

As it happens, by the way, I do know a fair bit about the Inquisition.
You're quite right, of course: Tomás de Torquemada was not a very
nice man. I not-infrequently enjoy gallows humor at the expense of
people much less than 500 years dead, however, so it's not a matter I'm
inclined to take seriously. I don't suggest that this is the best outlook
to take; quite possibly you are to be commended for steadfastly calling
a bad thing a bad thing, however remote. To me, for better or worse,
an auto da fe is fundamentally funny, as I am never
likely to be invited to one. :-)

I totally agree with you, Dominus. The connotations of "Grand Inquisitor" are horrific - people accused, tortured, burned, their property confiscated, all for the suspicion of heresy. It was an ugly periot of history, and I feel it should not be commemorated in the Monastery.

I would be honoured to be called "Grand Inquisitor". Truly honoured. They were beacons of civility and hope of their time. They created the underpinnings of modern judicial systems in that they were run by experts.

Up to that point, the King's court was run by lawyers who had no understanding of the religious crimes they were persecuting. The inquistion changed that by bringing in religious scholars who knew what the Catholic faith was about, and what heresy really was. That fact alone dropped conviction rates tremendously as many accused were simply not being heretical. Combine this with the Church's mission to evangelise, and you get the ability to repent and thus receive no punishment for what was, in effect, a capital offense. (It was a capital offense because it was considered treasonous: speaking against Catholocism, from where the King supposedly received his power, was also speaking against the King.)

History is far too complex for such a facile summary of an institution that existed that long, in that many places.

It is true that they were fairer than most other legal systems of the day. But they were still incredibly brutal by current standards.

It is true that they helped shape many modern judicial systems. But the British justice system, and its various descendents in the English-speaking world, are not among that number.

It is true that the Inquisition didn't burn masses of people at the stake. But they knew what would happen when they turned their victims over to secular authorities, and also had a role in convincing secular authorities to use that punishment.

It is true that part of the reason that the Spanish Inquisition was singled out for so much criticism was due to Protestant politics. But it is also true that they earned a good part of that criticism, particularly for their actions in the New World, and for their actions until Napoleon intervened. (Read, for instance, this description.)

It is true that the Inquisition gave many life imprisonment instead of turning them over to be burned. But life imprisonment in the way that they did it could well have been a harsher punishment.

It is true that the Inquisition did not actually drive the Jews out of Spain. But it did push for that to happen.

It is true that most have an exaggerated view of how horrible the Inquisition was. But it was still pretty darned horrible. Furthermore when it comes to the appropriateness of having Grand Inquisitor as a title on this site, the perception of people who are likely to be offended matters more than the reality.

Hmm, a bit of googling on the author of your second link gives the impression, that, while being a respected academic, he also seems to have made a bit of a career as an apologist for the various failings of the Christian churches over the millenia. I am not at all an expert on these matters, and of course haven't done extensive research on the guy, so I may be wrong, but personally from what I've seen in the last few minutes I'd take his words with a grain of salt.

Anyway, neither of the two links you gave deny that the Inquisition did actively seek out and persecute people who did nothing more wrong than hold personal beliefs not in accordance with that of the church. How right or wrong the Inquisition was in relation to what else was going on in the world at the time is of little interest IMO, that argument can be used to justify almost any atrocity ever. So I'm not sure its so very wise of you to say you'd be proud of being associated with them (if that is what you were saying), given that you don't otherwise come across as a guy who's proud to be persecuting people :-).

Oh god, this is so OT ;-). In an effort to justify my posting let me say that I heartily approve of the new XP system, and also of the phoenix-like transformation of the Grand Inquisitor to a Sage.

Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it. -- Brian W. Kernighan

This is such OT BS that I don't know where to begin. Perhaps with Portugal and Spain where the Inquisition forced every single Jew into hiding, death, or emmigration and had disastrous impact on Muslims as well.

At least I managed to be Saint for a day (or so). The new level system has me very excited. The day that I became a Saint really was the day that the system needed some adjustments. After all, my routine is just to show up every few days, vote occasionally, and post rarely. Now that we have a few levels, Saint means something again.

I'm extremely disappointed in the lack of logic in this decision. My rants are as follows.

It is extremal illogical to have 7 ranks whose aggregate has under 10 total users. It is even more ridiculous to have 5 ranks, completely devoid of a user who has achieved the status without ill gotten exp.

It is laughable that before 3k exp constituted Saint, and now the highest sizable rank is Bishop (40k exp) with only 6 having this label, and they are only halfway to their previous saintly rank

The term saint, is often used to establish stature, it was a well known term in the perl community and by stripping it of its previous meaning you require that people build name recognition for the other more esoteric terms.

A more thoughtful system would have been backwards compatible/a superset of the old established naming convention and would have granted ranks above Saint, possibly in the form of a surnames eg. 'Saint of Syntax' etc. This would allow Saints to identify with each other.

There was no forum or poll that allowed the users to vote on this decision.

Oblivious to the fact that Perlmonks is five years old, and none has reached 80k xp, the current saint level, the forces from above have lessened the flow of exp. How is someone to reach 80k xp when only a negligible few have reached the half way point, and now there is even less xp than before. Or, is one to ignore the ranking system entirely? In which case, why change something that had a purpose?

I think I could keep going, but I believe it's futile.

Update:

I would usually make this as another reply; but, in light of the fact that would just give you another opportunity to downvote because of dissension I'll elaborate here:

If 33,874 have never achieved 9k exp, and only 79 have 9k+ exp, than how reasonable is 10 levels, over one third of the possible 28 levels to be allocated to those monks? And, at that the last 7 levels move up in 10k xp increments. There is more experience to one of those levels than 99.76% of the user-base currently has. So, what utility do these levels serve in this "game." The answer is they don't. If you want an unreasonable expectation you could easily set one for yourself, how about we add another 15 levels on top of the preexisting 28 and make them 100k xp increments? And, we can make it such that no single node can receive over .05 xp? It is silly.

Here is a more reasonable suggestion:

Make each rank after 3k exp in 1k xp increments. 3000 is achieved at level 13, with 28 levels that would mean that the maximum of level 28 would require (3000+15*1k) or 18k xp. This would give a top rank that would achievable for some degree of the term. It would allow 20-31 people to identify with that rank, and it would make the trip there much more bearable.

Consider implementing a Saint + surname

If you want other ranks/titles after/besides the level 18 Saint, make them based on non-xp things, such as: A) granting the title of Pope to whomever has the max exp when the fairy does her business, B) granting the title of Cardinal Saint to the 10 next below him C) Granting titles like Most Active Saint of Yr.

To expand, here is an idea: Query for all nodes of the prior year, take the top .01% and save the exp in a temp var. Any new node that achives a greater ammount of positive exp, could be called "Blessed". Tally for each monk the amount of 'Blessed Nodes' that they have authored, make note of them in the homenodes, and index them much like the current "Best Nodes Of The Year" (which doesn't really fit with the monastery theme).

etc... There are lots of ways to make a system useful, I just fail to see how this is a reasonable way of doing it.

1. I beleive that the point was to give those high ranking individuals the ability to have a feeling of growth. In order to get that you have to have levels that havn't yet been attained.

2. I think you hit the reason right on the head, errr i mean the nail.

3. saint was just a title of the highest rank. Perhaps now we will see similar name-sake attributed to curate, who knows. I don't know anyone who went around bragging about being a saint so this probably isn't a problem.

4. Maybe, maybe not. As a previous saint i feel only a minor sense of loss, on the whole i probably didn't deserver any notions you apparently attach to saint hood.

5. The proposal was linked to here. BTW there is never any such poll or vote. This isn't a democracy. If you want to have a say then speak up in the correct forums (specificaly pmdev and the cb.)

6. I'm not sure how you can say they lessened XP. I didn't know there was a set quantity of i avialable and they reduced it. Actualy you could probably argue the reverse. As a saint i'd basicaly stopped voting unless outraged by something. Now i will begin to vote more agian. That voting produces XP for myself and for the person I vote on. It is quite possible then that the flow of XP will increase greatly as many dormant saints begin to vote like maniacs ;).

I could go on as well but like you said its futile. ;) Whoever please try to remember that personal XP (unlike node XP) is mostly a game meant to midly entertain, to give a sense of community participation, and to provide that little carrot for people to behave slightly better than they might otherwise. Of course it can't be all those things to all people, and it is probably something very different to others, but remember XP isn't realy anyway so don't worry too much over it.

P.S. I will admit that upon reading this initialy I was dumb founded and felt stripped of my previous regal, but now i realize I didn't loose saint hood, i was never realy a saint before. After all a Saint can't stop being a Saint if he was realy Saint now can he? ;)

So I and *many* other begin a fresh journey in a game we thought we had already won. This should be viewed as a good thing and a challenge.

++ to everyone who helped make it so, and ++ to those who don't like it too, after all you'll need that ++ to get back on track!

6. I'm not sure how you can say they lessened XP. I didn't know there was a set quantity of i available and they reduced it. Actualy you could probably argue the reverse. As a saint i'd basicaly stopped voting unless outraged by something. Now i will begin to vote more agian. That voting produces XP for myself and for the person I vote on. It is quite possible then that the flow of XP will increase greatly as many dormant saints begin to vote like maniacs ;).

Part of this your are surely mistaken on, you no longer get exp for voting after you have passed Beadle -- level 5. This is where the B stops in the graph. 504121

Before at Saint -- 3k exp you got 40votes, now at Curate -- 3k exp You get 24 votes. Further analysis of the graph shows that only 7 people will receive more votes on the upper end of the scale, and that will account for an increase of 16xp daily, oddly the same difference between one Saint of yesteryear, and one Curate as of now.

In addition:

20xp< you <50xp

You get 2 votes rather than 5

50xp< you <90xp

You get 4 rather than 8

90xp< you <100xp

You get 6 rather than 8

100xp< you <150xp

You get 6 rather than 12

150xp< you <200xp

You get 8 rather than 12

200xp< you <250xp

You get 8 rather than 16

250xp< you <450xp

You get 10 rather than 16

400xp< you <500xp

You get 12 rather than 16

500xp< you <600xp

You get 12 rather than 20

600xp< you <900xp

You get 14 rather than 20

900xp< you <1,000xp

You get 16 rather than 20

1,000xp< you <1,300xp

You get 16 rather than 25

1,300xp< you <1,600xp

You get 18 rather than 25

1,600xp< you <1,800xp

You get 18 rather than 30

1,800xp< you <2,300xp

You get 20 rather than 35

2,300xp< you <2,400xp

You get 20 rather than 40

2,400xp< you <3,000xp

You get 22 rather than 40

3,000xp< you <4,000xp

You get 24 rather than 40

4,000xp< you <5,400xp

You get 26 rather than 40

5,400xp< you <7,000xp

You get 28 rather than 40

7,000xp< you <9,000xp

You get 30 rather than 40

9,000xp< you <12,000xp

You get 32 rather than 40

12,000xp< you <16,000xp

You get 34 rather than 40

16,000xp< you <22,000xp

You get 36 rather than 40

22,000xp< you <30,000xp

You get 38 rather than 40

30,000xp< you <40,000xp

You finally catch up, 10k exp more and you come out ahead.

So as you can see, everyone excluding the 6 Bishops (congrats btw) and the 1 Archbishop will loose xp/day to give away. Subsequently, this means stipend for a good post will be reduced. If the numbers of users are correct that means, 6,164 people loose xp/day, and 7 gain, If my math is correct, and it might very well not be, that means 0.11% of people will get more exp. I don't see how anyone can extrapolate more exp going around based on the numbers. If as a Saint you failed to spend your 40exp before, that is a comment more on your own behavior than a trend that can be backed with the data we have now. Data shows this must be a damn powerful trend to even counter the force of daily xp that has been depleted.

Update:

Oh, yeah, about this saint issue. If you are level 13 or higher then you are a saint (or perhaps 'saintly'). If you are level 26 then you are both a Saint and saintly. IOW, we still consider all users over 3k to be 'saints'. Have a look at Saints In Our Book to see.

Sounds like needlss ambiguity hiding behind the guise of an improvement. By your own remarks this system was made to compensate for a rise in the saintbase, from 20 to 400. This is a concern, but the "Saints in Our Book" isn't? I can't see argueing one point and not the other. Either your out to protect the 'Saint' stature, or not.

BTW, I plan to upvote you, as I have most others in this thread; but, I'm currently out of xp. Darn, if only it wasn't reduced.

1. I beleive that the point was to give those high ranking individuals the ability to have a feeling of growth. In order to get that you have to have levels that havn't yet been attained.

Oh, c'mon, don't be silly! I strongly doubt that those high ranking individuals needed any additional level to have a feeling of growth. OR that they really matter!

Not to say that I disagree with your rant to EvanCarroll's one. Actually that many and that high levels rather serve the purpose of showing the new brothers and sisters joining the Monastery that even very active members with exteremely high rankings still have a long way up to the ultimate level, so that they will start their pilgrimage towards enlightenment with due hubri^Whumility.

3. saint was just a title of the highest rank. Perhaps now we will see similar name-sake attributed to curate, who knows. I don't know anyone who went around bragging about being a saint so this probably isn't a problem.

Hey, and so I'm such a miserable nullity not to count as "one", heh?!?

Whatever, that kind of name-sake if really that important, of which I'm not really sure, was so at best as an inner "Monastery thing", and it was far too easy to become a saint, so that just by this fact saintity itself was somewhat desaintized, wasn't it?

Jokes apart, curate can't have just the same name-sake as saint, since they convey quite different psychological feelings - let's face it! Also, not being a native English speaker, many of the names for the new levels sound somewhat exhotic and unknown, and I have an overall impression, like many other people here, that the choice has been suboptimal. But OTOH I wouldn't know even where to start to do better, so I just shut up. After all, who am I -but a simple Vicar- to say how the Monastery "should" be managed?

4. Maybe, maybe not. As a previous saint i feel only a minor sense of loss, on the whole i probably didn't deserver any notions you apparently attach to saint hood.

Let's face this too! The majority of us former saints did feel a sense of loss for being unsaintized. OTOH I suddenly found my level pushed up from 10 to 15, and (letting aside the fact that the former was out of 10 and the letter out of 28 ;-) this compensates for the loss!

6. I'm not sure how you can say they lessened XP.

Indeed rumors are that P is a little-known roman numeral for "Plentium", so that XP is "ten less than a plentium". Thus it is a constant, and cannot be lessened, nor increased, for what that matters...

P.S. I will admit that upon reading this initialy I was dumb founded and felt stripped of my previous regal, but now i realize I didn't loose saint hood, i was never realy a saint before. After all a Saint can't stop being a Saint if he was realy Saint now can he? ;)

I thought Saint Christopher was declared
a legend and not really a Saint.
After a little research on it,
he seems to have lost some status but retained his title,
but others did not.
So there is precedent for losing saint-hood if someone cannot be proved more than a legend.
This is probably not an issue with perlmonks,
as contributors are real people and not legends
(though some have legendary reputations).

However, if there are bots acting at perlmonks and gaining XP, this issue might have to be reconsidered ...

I'm sorry you feel that way... it seems to me that the idea here was to make the process more "open-ended", so that no matter how high you've risen, there is more to go. That's how it is in programming, and in most of life - no matter how good you get, there is room for growth.

Sure, I'm disappointed that I won't be "saint" any time soon, or that I got "demoted" to hermit. And yes, I'm going to have to learn a whole new set of names, all that stuff - but so what? The number didn't change, only the name attached to it. That number is a better reflection of how I'm doing, than calling me saint, pope, lord high everything, supreme astronaut, or whatever.

I believe the result of this change will be to encourage those who had reached the "saint" position to continue, even though some may have felt like they'd "arrived" or "made it", or whatever. A saint with 3000 points isn't necessarily the same sort of programmer (or participant in Perl Monks) as one with 8000 points. Why should the same name be applied to them both?

Anyway, I'm OK with the change, though I agree that perhaps a bit of user input might have been appropriate. Perhaps over time this change will be more palatable to others, too...

Without wishing to sound critical, I think that you are perhaps overly concerned with XP and with the words associated with a given level of XP. It seems to me that XP should be no more than a sort of fun incentive to grow, rather than something you struggle for and fight over. It's not a particularly good measure of much, except how popular your posts are with the other monks. As someone recently pointed out, there was one monk who never posted a single article, yet attained the level of "saint". For all I know, s/he might not even have tried to learn Perl.

Rather than remain upset over this, why not try to make it fun, just learn Perl, ask questions, post answers, and so on? You've offered some very good answers to questions - you must know your stuff. So sit back and enjoy... or not. I guess it's really just how you feel...

I'm extremely disappointed in the lack of logic in this decision. My rants are as follows.

Well many of us were disappointed with some aspect or another of the new system. But it seems to me truely excessive to be "extremely disappointed".

1. It is extremal illogical to have 7 ranks whose aggregate has under 10 total users. It is even more ridiculous to have 5 ranks, completely devoid of a user who has achieved the status without ill gotten exp.

2. It is laughable that before 3k exp constituted Saint, and now the highest sizable rank is Bishop (40k exp) with only 6 having this label, and they are only halfway to their previous saintly rank

Well, it seems that within the old system Sainthood had become quite a earthly thing, whereas the new one pushes it back and by far to its heavenly status. But it's still there, depending only on your skills, and involvement and time, and if you don't mean to spend yours to such and extent, do a favour to yourself and do not forget that after all fundamentally this is still a game!! Albeit a stimulating one, and one stimulating you to write (and do) interesting things, Perl-wise, that is.

3. The term saint, is often used to establish stature, it was a well known term in the perl community and by stripping it of its previous meaning you require that people build name recognition for the other more esoteric terms.

My overall impression is that you're exaggerating here too. PM is a great resource, but it does not coincide with the whole perl community, and I don't think that the term saint is all that known in other context. And even if it where, was all that important? Do you know of interviews in which it has been determinant?

4. A more thoughtful system would have been backwards compatible/a superset of the old established naming convention and would have granted ranks above Saint, possibly in the form of a surnames eg. 'Saint of Syntax' etc. This would allow Saints to identify with each other.

On the extension bit I do agree, although some other retouching to the levels may have been done, including the insertion of a few new ones "below" and a (more) moderate stretching, bringing Saint up to, say, 10k.

5. There was no forum or poll that allowed the users to vote on this decision.

Was it expected to be? Granted it would have been nice, but after all it may also have been a mess...

6. Oblivious to the fact that Perlmonks is five years old, and none has reached 80k xp, the current saint level, the forces from above have lessened the flow of exp. How is someone to reach 80k xp when only a negligible few have reached the half way point, and now there is even less xp than before.

Is it so bad to know that however high you rank, theres' still so much you could do, so much you could learn, so many ways you may contribute to the Perl community?

Or, is one to ignore the ranking system entirely? In which case, why change something that had a purpose?

Why should you ignore it completely? Just do not forget it's there to serve you (in the form of a sort of game) and not vice versa. After all I have a higher ranking than $Larry or, say, autrijus here. Am I expected to go round boastin' about this?!?

This feels like an aristocratic decision .. a decision made by those higher in rank in order benefit themselves (that being, to bring some 'fun' back to the system)

While I wholly support their decision to add further ranks, the reorganisation of the lower levels was unnecessary.

Keeping everything just where it was would allow those of us below 'saint' to continue in our pilgrimage to sainthood ... 3000XP. But now I'm on a pilgrimage to popehood, and even if I ignore that, to become a saint I now need 80000XP!

(On an aside: To keep with the catholic background, this now requires each saint to have performed 54 miracles after their death!)

Why couldn't we have just rejigged it for you upper-level saints and left the rest of us on our journey? Why not just indroduce levels of sainthood so you can play your little games and leave the rest of us on our pilgrimage alone?

I feel like some character in a game who's been sent to the next village -- only the person playing the game just paused it and moved the village!

So shouldn't Saints in our Book now be re-titled to Curates in our Book? Or we could adjust the cutoff upwards from 3000 XP to, say, 16_000 (Abbot). If we move it all the way up to 80_000 the book will be empty....

I'm going to join in the whining about some of the new titles. Neglecting their Western European Christian leaning, some of the ordering seems to be ...odd...

Grand Inquisitor seems more like a job title than a rank. I'm not sure I'd want my rank to have connotations of being a high-level torturer; Inquisitors were also battlers agains orthodoxy, which seems, to me, to be more appropriate for a bondage-and-discipline language like Ada. "Beadle" is a minor religious official, but Pilgrim isn't even that -- it's just somebody on a pilgrimage (and we're all on a pilgrimage to greater Perl wisdom, no?)

Of course, getting no less than 28 rank titles is non-trivial, so I'd merely suggest replacing Grand Inquisitor with Primate and swap Saint and Pope. And maybe renaming Pilgrim to "Evangelist"...

I totally agree that there's a problem with "Grand Inquisitor" -- I might be inclined to slow down or suspend my contributions to the Monastery if I were getting close to assuming that title (not like that's going to happen any time soon, but still), because for me the connotations of the term are heinous, and I'd be embarrassed to see it next to my name.

I'm not sure about "Primate" though -- that term has a whole 'nuther problem of connotations... And "Evangelist"? Ick. "Beadle" is actually kinda cute (like, I'm picturing floppy ears, short legs and a cold, wet nose...)

I think if we're going to put a "Pilgrim" above a "Monk" (which I'm perfectly willing to accept), why not set a "Prelate" above a "Cardinal"? (According to my dictionary, "prelate" is simply a vague term for any high-ranking church official, but perhaps no one would be offended by "redefining" the term this way.)

Or better yet (as suggested in one strong dissent, it would probably be just as well to remove this extra level completely and move the higher levels down a notch -- it's currently unoccupied, so what difference would it make, really?

I kind of like "Primate" as one of the ranks; after all the Archbishop of Canterbury is the Primate of the Anglican Church. I can see, though, that "Primate" does have sort of a genus-istic slant that may not be politically correct. "Patriarch" (for the monks who identify themselves as female, "Matriarch" could be substituted) doesn't seem to be used, though. Sure beats "Grand Inquisitor" in my eyes...

"Evangelist" seems to have become a bad word thanks to certain nameless people who claim Christianity as their private preserve.

I like the changes in common - but I'm dissapointed by the fact that you lifted the necessary XP for sainthood by factor 26.6 - that's heavy, and the more average folks among us (yeah, that's me for example) won't get saints again before perl12 (I expect that's about the time we celebrate Larrys 100. birthday).

After all, who really wants to consider the like sof me as a SAINT of all things! I truly look forward to becoming a parson in due course.

Of course I would question whether the Ssaints really needed an incentive of any sort to be active. I just strolled down the Saints in our Book and note that of the top 50, only two have not been here in the last 24 hours. Regardless of the experience system, which is unique amongst the forums I inhablit, this site would have to be the best community I have come across bar none. It seems lots of folk enjoy whoring for experience, me? Well just whoring for knowledge is a lot more fun :)

The code says images are allowed at level 7. I'll leave it for others to change as I wasn't involved in the discussion / decision (and I don't understand the motivation of having all of the privileges bunched together on the same level boundary).

Actually that was a mistake. We changed the scheme of lower levels a few times and I think that accessrule was overlooked on one of the later goes. Level 5 should indeed still have home node images. (And is now fixed to do so).

Suggestions/ideas for new powers will be welcomed and considered for inclusion..

Amylaar's Bughunt

Level

4

Range

Touch

Domain

Geek

Resistance

Will

Spell component

Printout

Duration

1min/level

Once a day, caster may concentrate on a piece of code, entire an entire program, a module, or a single subroutine. Caster will gain insight in the program, and will be aware of a single bug. The longer caster concentrates, the better caster is able to pinpoint the bug. Caster cannot control which bug will be made aware, although caster can focus her attention to a piece of code. If used as a sixth level spell, caster gains insight on how to solve the bug.
If the code was written by a coder from the FLOSS school, the spell is cast with caster level +2. However, if the code is protected by a SCO counter-spell, the caster immediately needs to make a fortitude safety roll. If the roll succeeds, caster will drop to INT = 6 for 10+2d6 days - if the roll fails, she will lose the ability to cast spells until she can make a case in front of magician Kimbell, who has the power to restore spell casting abilities.

A piece of code can only be subjected to Amylaar's bughunt once. The material component of the spell is a hand-written copy of the code, written such that all characters have the same width and height. The code should be written on specially prepared cards (costs: 60gp per card, 80 symbols per card). The cards aren't consumed in the spell, but cannot be reused.

The new system rocks :D! Took a little time to get used to and understand what was going on. The other day I had logged on to see my level 7 status as an abbot, and come back in to find myself as a Friar (again). Thought, I was tyring to figure out how the six (for the friar) got flipped into a nine, putting me two levels ahead of where I was :D.

Anyway, I think PM was due for a nice change. No complaints here ;).

I must say, that I love the title I get when I move up to level 10. . . Hermit :D. Whoever came up with the neat titles, did a great job :D. Very creative :D.

I was going to refrain from this point, but it really does bother me that you have a Pope greater than a Saint or Apostle. That doesn't work in the Catholic world, nor any other Christian, Hindu, New Age, or Churchianity system.

The real Pope is not necessarily a saint. Even though the first Pope was an apostle FIRST, you probably could not compare any Pope since with the Apostles.

Higher than a Saint in the Hindu system would be an "Avatar," a divine incarnation of God ... god in the body.

Pope and Apostle should be just under saint.

Don't get me wrong: it's your web site, your system, your rules. I am grateful for everything that you guys do and have done. A very valuable resource for me and other friends. But seeing Pope above Saint and Apostle just makes me look around for the mouthwash.

Why? Sure, the Pope isn't a Saint - if only for the reason that to be Pope, one has to be alive, and to be a Saint, one has to be dead (at least, in the Catholic church). Other churches call anyone who is currently in heaven a Saint. Yet other churches consider anyone having the same faith as their to be a "Saint". ("The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints" is an obvious example of such a church). And you probably don't want to be considered a Saint in the eyes of a Discordian.

But the Pope is the infallable representative of Christ on earth. Which would rank him directly below Christ. And one can be canonized (the act that makes one a "Saint") without ever holding any rank in a church or religious organisation. So, one might argue a Pope "ranks" higher than a Saint. Or draw the conclusion they cannot be ranked together.

As for Apostles, in the Catholic church, Bishops are seen as the successors to the Apostles. So, you'd might rank them close together.

Personally, I don't care. Order them in alpabetical order, and I won't complain. Now, if they had ranked Dumbledore above Gandalf, then I'd be upset.

Why hasn't this thread been downvoted?? All of you people who claim you always downvote nodes about XP, well here's your chance to downvote a node. It's all about XP and worse yet it has over 150 ++.

This new XP system is a big step in the wrong direction. If you really think XP doesn't matter then why are we expanding the system? Now instead of just 10 levels to go through we've got 28! Now you've got almost 3 times as many levels to worry about attaning before you can stop worring about XP. Also we go from needing the extremely high 3,000 points to needed the outrageous 100,000 points. Now point accumlation is even more important as you need 33+ times as many points.

your claim that this node is about XP is kind of silly. It’s more about site changes than XP, particularly anyone’s personal XP, much as it may be about the XP system.

Now who's being silly? A massive change to the XP system isn't about XP? I don't follow that logic.

Wouldn’t downvoting a node that is about XP be a bit of an oxymoronic rule anyway?

I agree, I've never understood this behavior. That's why I'm pointing out the hypocrisy of it.

XP is more important than ever before.

Obviously it is to you – why else are you posting this node anonymously? I thought you don’t think XP is important; why would downvotes phase you?

I never said I didn't think XP isn't important. I'm complaining about those who do claim it isn't important but clearly act contrary. The truth is that XP is extremely important and we must discard this lie that it isn't important.

"The good news is, most of us will find we've gone up in level. The progression at the low end of the scale is now smoother, and the levels come a bit quicker, so hopefully they'll do a good job of keeping our new members interested."

That's one way to look at it. Another is that, using myself for example, a fresh member might see himself go from 5th out of 10 ranks to 7th out of 28. Not that I feel I deserved to be halfway up the depth chart, but that some could be disturbed by change. New members might be more interested, but some might be a bit intimidated by the long road ahead and not feel as motivated to contribute. Then again, there's enough people here that there will be many differing perspectives.

I personally like the changes in general at first glance, and feel its a better system to handle the large population of Perlmonks. Although I'm echoing one of Evan_Carrol's issues, there is a disproportionate amount of levels for a small group, more than half the levels were previously contained within Saints.

Nice post. And nice thread - I read it almost entirely. I could find many contrasting opinions here: each pov has some strenght and some quirks.

My own personal opinion? Well, we'll have to (wait and) see. All in all a change, and an "upwards" extension was needed. My overall impression is that there may have been a more accurate choice of the level names and maybe it's just me but I don't like the somewhat erratic nature of deltas.

What the $#%@ is a Sexton, anyway?

Most importantly, you don't answer the question you ask yourself... oh, never mind!

We regret to report that the Grand Inquistor perished, this morning, in a tragic stake-burning accident. Standing in will be Sage.

Considering that many popes have been at least 'controversial' for many people - if not more, why stop at replacing 'Grand Inquistor'? If I would be offended by seeing 'Grand Inquistor' in front of my name, I'd certainly be offended by the label 'Pope'.